Raven's Call Vineyard Update

Yes, I re-named the vineyard this winter. It is now "Raven's Call". I expended a fair bit of effort this past winter digging up every other row of grapes I planted last summer, as I determined that the 3-foot spacing between rows was not going to be practical. Not enough room between to maintain.

This required extending rows, and adding more rows, which required clearing space already planted to small trees. Then I built trellis's using my own hand-split cedar posts. The style I'm going to try trains two permanent cordons from each plant onto a main wire at about 30 inches, and each year's new growth will then reach for (hopefully) the upper wire at about 60 inches. Here are the results as of early July.

The Madeleine Angevine grapes are doing the best by far. About 80% have grapes - about 3 to 5 clusters per plant.

The berries seem a bit small to me, given the good block of warm weather we've had, but I may be way off.

But the Regent are not too far behind, as far as foliage. But only about 20% of them have fruit.


The Pinot Blanc and Pinot Noir are way behind, but at least they are looking much better than last year. They didn't even warrant building the first 30-inch trellis wire yet.

I purchased cuttings of three more varieties this spring: Muller-Thurgau, Siegerrebe, and Pinot Gris. I had about 90% success on 35 cuttings each so have about 30 each, so another 100 or so plants to plant out. But first I have to clear out more space for them... it's always something.